Debating The Edge Of Development In Canton

You can call it sprawl, but town officials here in Canton, as elsewhere, will take exception. You can call it the start of suburbia or the edge of development.

Whatever it is, on foot I was easily able to find the place where it all takes shape, in Canton.

Walking east from the overbuilt Route 179 intersection, it’s mostly trees for another mile along Route 44 until the top of the slope at East Hill Road. Right there, just before the corner, the sidewalk starts – and with it, an endless line of houses and commercial buildings stretches all the way through Manchester, defining metro Hartford.

Later along Route 44 it will grow oppressive, with dense shopping centers and endless asphalt. But for that first mile or two, you can still feel the 19th century, colonial highway character of the place even as progress roars through. It’s still sprinkled with private houses, like the one where a guy named Isaac, originally from Granby, was staying for a few months.

“It’s different up here on 44,” he said.

It’s not Kansas anymore, but we’re still in sprawl lite. Over there is Valley Energy, down there are a couple of bank buildings with peaked roofs of course, and there’s Benidorm Bikes in a ski lodge-style building. There’s a red colonial house with a woman named Tammy out front, shielded by three enormous maple trees.

It’s been a good place to raise her three children, now 23, 21 and 16, Tammy says. “I think it’s really cool,” she says. We’re so close to the public school….but we still have deer and bear.”

The bear actually crossed Route 44 last year and, once, followed her son around the house, “not in a mean way,” she said. She texted the neighbors to warn them.

And she talks about the accidents along this stretch. “They fly down this hill,” she said, pointing to Bristol Drive. Recently a car hit the sign and retaining wall across the street, at a small, upscale auto repair shop, at 2 a.m. “It shook this house,” she said.

The town has gone to some lengths to balance business growth interests with preservation. Canton has a new conservation plan that has been years in the making, and something called “form-based code,” rules that regulate business property based on “what should it look like, what should it feel like, rather than what’s in it,” as First Selectman Richard Barlow puts it.

Whether it’s the rules that are just coming on line, the seemingly endless development recession or the fact that Canton doesn’t have a lot of flat land along Route 44, so far it’s working – with a lot of debate. “We don’t want the entire area to look like Farmington Valley Shoppes, but in that area, we embrace it,” Barlow says.

Tom Bradley, a member of the economic development agency in town, bristles at the idea that the rules are designed to keep business out. Perish the very thought. It’s a matter of steering and guiding, rather than controlling. “It’s actually attracting more development and also keeping more character,” Bradley said.

Following the road further east toward the green, we start to see a strip mall or two – excuse me, a shopping plaza – and the fully paved Canton Village, which could be turned into a pedestrian-friendly square at great expense. Marring the small-scale look of the houses that encircle the town green, we see a horrid, 70s-era, three-story office building.

Ah yes, Barlow sighs. That was built just before he joined the zoning board. Out on the edge of development, the changes are clear but gradual.